When most people think of part-time employment in the public sector, they assume that it (1) could be a steppingstone to a full-time job; (2) pays less than full-time, chiefly because it involves fewer hours of work; (3) is voluntary, and (4) is primarily meant to supplement a family’s income.
When it comes to California’s 36,000 part-time community college professors, the facts defy all four assumptions.
Unlike workers in other professions, part-time college instructors, regardless of length of service and/or quality of performance, will not be promoted to full-time unless they are lucky enough to secure an increasingly scarce full-time position teaching on the tenure track. Part-time instructors, many who work for decades off the tenure track, have been called “apprentices to nowhere.”
Over the last five decades, colleges have gravitated toward part-time instructors for the flexibility of their semester-length agreements with no obligation to rehire, and their lower expense. For example, while all full-time instructors receive state-paid health insurance, only about 10% (3,742) of the state’s part-timers do.